I have.” He straightened and stepped forward, bending slightly to offer his hand to the boy. “How are you this morning, Trent?”
Obediently, Trent shook hands. “Fine, sir, thank you.”
The reverend folded his arms thoughtfully. “You have excellent manners, young man. Do you think we could dispose of them in favor of something as mundane as, say, friendship?”
The boy merely stared at the tall, dark man before him, then, ever so slowly, he turned a questioning gaze up at his mother. Clarice smiled. Why not? Heaven knew her little boy seldomly had opportunity to be just that, a little boy. Why did she think this man could teach her son how to be a child? Trent turned his attention back to the reverend, his expression as inscrutable as usual, and slowly nodded.
Bolton Charles ruffled the boy’s hair. “Okay, now, buddy, here’s the deal. When it’s just you and me or maybe you and me and your mom, I’d like you to call me Bolton. That all right with you?”
Trent screwed up one eye and chewed one corner of his mouth in his typical expression of engrossing thought. Clarice smoothed a hand through his hair, repairing the damage done earlier and fixing this moment in her mind. He was such an endearing little boy. So bright, so beautiful, so determined to be all that he was expected to be—and with such conflicting expectations! Wallis wanted a carbon copy of the son he had lost, who in turn had been meant to be a carbon copy of himself, while she wanted only for her son to discover who and what he was. She was under no illusions about Wallis’s motives in setting up this arrangement between Bolton Charles and her son. His goal, ultimately, was to remove Trenton as much as possible from her influence. What Wallis failed to consider was that by bringing in Bolton to monopolize the boy’s time, he also removed his grandson from his own influence. She dropped her hands to her son’s narrow shoulders, prompting him to answer the reverend’s question. Obediently, Trenton complied.
“I think I’ll call you Bolt,” he announced firmly.
The reverend blinked, clearly taken aback, but then a hand came out to stroke his chin and a grin slowly stretched his mouth into a broad curve. “All right, if you like.”
Trenton shrugged, unconcerned. “I do,” he said ingenuously. “It fits you.”
“Does it now?”
“Mmm-hmm. ‘Sides, I like having my own names for people,” Trent admitted.
Bolton laughed. “All right. Bolt it is. Now suppose you tell me what you prefer to be called.”
The reply was immediate. “Trent.”
“Not Trenton?” the reverend asked, glancing at Clarice.
The boy tilted his head back and sent a look of his own up at his mother. Clarice’s heart seemed to expand to fill her entire chest as she recognized the love and trust shining in her son’s eyes. But there was more. In that look was also the desire to protect, and it made her wince inwardly. How had she let this happen? What other eight-year-old bore the burden of protecting his mother? Mothers were supposed to protect their children, not vice versa. Silently she promised her son that things were going to change, and her hands tightened commensurately upon his shoulders. That seemed to satisfy something in her son, for he then swung his gaze around to the reverend.
“Trenton is the name my mother calls me,” he said. He might as well have added that she was the only one allowed to do so.
Bolton lifted his gaze to Clarice’s, but she couldn’t interpret the expression there. “Good enough,” he said quietly, and his eyes held hers a moment longer before he dropped them once more to the boy. “Well, Trent, I had in mind to toss around a baseball this morning. Want to join me?”
Clarice knew that in this instance the inscrutable look upon her son’s face meant he had misgivings that he was trying to hide.
“I don’t know if I’d like it,” he said bluntly. What he meant was that he hadn’t ever done it before.
The message, thankfully, did not escape Bolton Charles. He shrugged. “Why don’t we give it a try? If it’s not any fun, we’ll do something else.”
Trenton screwed up that eye again, then briskly nodded.
Bolton clapped him on the shoulder. “Great!” He pointed toward the door in the far wall. “There are two gloves and a ball waiting on a black chair inside my office. If you’ll get them, I’ll just have a word with your mom.”
Trent flipped his mother a look and departed. Clarice watched him go through the door then turned her attention to Bolton Charles. “You handled that well,” she said lightly.
He smiled. “I had a long talk with my secretary yesterday. She has two grandchildren. They’re younger than Trent, I’m afraid, but since she raised three children of her own, two of them sons, she was able to give me a few insights. Her best advice, I think, was to share things I enjoy with Trent.”
“And you enjoy baseball,” Clarice surmised.
“When I have the chance,” he confirmed, “which isn’t often.”
She couldn’t resist the urge to tease him. “Did you play baseball in high school, Bolt?”
He grinned at her. “And college.”
That surprised her. “Really? Then you must be pretty good.”
“Actually, I was good, past tense. I even considered, briefly, playing pro ball.”
“What happened?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.
His gaze locked with hers. “Just what was supposed to happen,” he told her evenly. “I graduated college and went on to seminary.”
“Oh.” Of course. What a foolish question. She felt heat rising in her cheeks.
He laughed easily. “Why is it that people seem to think the ministry is foisted on hapless fellows with no particular talent for anything else?”
“I don’t know,” she said, not quite able to meet his gaze again. “Maybe because it seems such a difficult, thankless job.”
“But it isn’t,” he protested. “You don’t see the bank president being asked to toss a ball around with a kid, do you?”
She smiled. “No, I guess not.”
Trent reappeared then with the gloves and ball, which he carried over to Bolton. Bolton picked one much the worse for wear and wiggled his hand into it. He then beamed a bright, happy smile at Clarice. “I rest my case.”
She laughed outright. “You’ve really taken your secretary’s advice to heart, haven’t you?”
“Absolutely. Now, if you’ll excuse us, this glove is begging to be used.”
He held it up to Trent’s ear as if the boy could really hear it beg. Trent giggled, something so completely out of character for him that Clarice felt a shock of guilt, followed swiftly by a welling of gratitude for this good-looking minister. She wondered if he knew how grateful she was. His smile seemed to say that he understood completely, but suddenly it was she who
